Does the FBI have the ability to protect us from
terrorists already here?

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I alarmed a radio talk show host in Washington, D.C. when I told him that if
there were a war with Iraq, it could be more dangerous to be a civilian in
New York City or Washington than it would be to be a soldier in the Gulf.
Iraqi officials - and doves here and in Europe - have been making two
mutually contradictory arguments: Iraq has no weapons of mass
destruction...but it will use them if America attacks. Iraq has no
connection to international terror groups...but it will launch terror
attacks within the United States if America goes to war.

President Bush was forceful in his State of the Union address. But he looked
tired. Peggy Noonan thinks she knows the reason why:

"Four months ago a friend who had recently met with the president on other
business reported to me that in conversation the president has said that he
has been having some trouble sleeping, and that when he awakes in the
morning the first thing he often thinks is: I wonder if this is the day
Saddam will do it," Noonan wrote in the Wall Street Journal.

What the president meant, Noonan's friend said, is if this will be the day
that Saddam launches a terror attack on American soil.

Saddam may have done this at least once before. The late James Fox, who
headed the FBI investigation of the first World Trade Center bombing in
1993, was convinced it was masterminded by an Iraqi agent.

Investigative reporter Jayna Davis has assembled an impressive body of
evidence suggesting Iraqi involvement in the Oklahoma City bombing. Despite
doubters in the CIA, Czech officials still say hijack leader Mohammed Atta
met with an Iraqi intelligence officer in Prague a few months before Sept.
11. A special intelligence unit in the Pentagon has identified nearly 100
other contacts between Iraq and al Qaida dating back to 1992, according to
David Rose of Vanity Fair.

Secretary of State Colin Powell is likely to present additional information
about contacts between Saddam's regime and al Qaida at the United Nations
today. What Powell presents is almost certain to be dismissed by doves,
who view indications of cooperation between Iraq and al Qaida chiefly in
domestic political terms. They are more interested in what can wound George
Bush than in how Saddam might wound the United States. They insist on
courtroom standards of evidence. Saddam must be presumed innocent unless
proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. Evidence of prior bad acts should
not be permitted to color interpretation of ambiguous evidence of current
involvement in international terror.

The British suspect Algerian radicals arrested last month in connection with
a plot to use the deadly poison ricin against British soldiers have ties to
both al Qaida and Iraq. What if there are terror squads here, equipped with
ricin or anthrax or smallpox?

The FBI has launched a search for several thousand illegal Iraqi immigrants
who have gone missing, the Washington Post reported Jan. 27.

About 300,000 people of Iraqi origin live legally in the United States,
according to the Iraqi-American Council. The overwhelming majority are
hostile to Saddam Hussein. Presumably, most of the roughly 3,000 Iraqi
"absconders" the FBI is seeking also oppose Saddam. But if only 1 percent
are terrorists...

Readers of this column know I have minimum high regard for the competence of
the FBI as an intelligence agency. My regard was not heightened by this
paragraph in the Washington Post story:

"Law enforcement officials said they were surprised to learn, through
records, of the number of Iraqi visitors who have been ordered deported for
overstaying their visas or other violations, but never appeared for removal
proceedings."

Nor was my confidence increased when I learned that the effort to find the
"lost" Iraqis only began a couple of months ago, and only after it was
insisted upon by members of Congress who, the Post said, "openly questioned
the FBI's ability to guard against espionage and terror attacks in the event
of an Iraqi conflict."

I am confident that our soldiers can make quick work of the Iraqi military.
I wish I were as confident of the FBI's ability to protect us from
terrorists already here.

02/03/03: The "Axis of Weasels"01/29/03: A bit of the jitters01/27/03: The world's mediocre intelligence agency01/21/03: By reaffirming GOP opposition to racism, president demonstrates willingness to confront liars01/16/03: Why the United States should withdraw all of its military forces from South Korea as rapidly as we reasonably can 01/14/03: Federal incompetence driven by political correctness, not trampling of civil liberties, is what we should fear01/09/03: Bag this boondoggle: The V-22 Osprey would hurt our national defense01/07/03: Another Korean war?01/02/03: Ostriches12/26/02: Learning from Canada's economic suicide12/24/02: A moral dilemma: Support a vicious fascist dictator or the poor and downtrodden?12/20/02: Time to tell the truth: The great movement of blacks to the Democratic Party took place for economic reasons, not because of civil rights12/18/02: Nothing better illustrates Trent Lott's unfitness for the post of Senate
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